I run a two-location cheese shop in the Hudson Valley and sell perishable items (cheese, cold items) that need a cold pack surcharge added at checkout, but only for orders shipping to warmer/farther zones. Posting here because support confirmed this is a platform limitation, not something I can configure around.
The setup: Square Online shipping lets you build item-level shipping profiles (attach a rate to specific items) or order-level shipping profiles (zone-based rates, can use real-time carrier rates). Item-level profiles support only one flat rate, and an item can only belong to one profile at a time.
The bug/limitation: when a cart contains only items assigned to an item-level profile, the order-level zone-based rates are skipped entirely, even if an order-level profile also exists and would otherwise apply. I confirmed this with a live test order.
Why I can’t work around it myself: an item-level profile can only charge one flat rate, not a rate that varies by shipping zone. And since items are exclusive to one profile, I can’t have a cold pack surcharge item-level profile and a zone-based order-level profile both apply to the same cart. Using modifiers to simulate a zone surcharge does not work either, because modifier charges stack with quantity instead of applying once per order.
I have seen other sellers raise the same issue on the Square Seller Community forums, so this does not appear to be an isolated case.
For comparison, Shopify’s shipping profiles support multiple zones within a single profile, each with its own rate, without the item-exclusivity restriction, so the same setup is possible there.
Could someone confirm whether this is a known limitation on Square’s roadmap, or whether there is a supported way to combine a per-item surcharge with zone-based rates that I am missing?
Thanks.